


Taking Candy From a Stranger

by darkavenger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Craigslist, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkavenger/pseuds/darkavenger
Summary: In an act of petty vengeance, Roxas posts an ad on Craigslist.





	Taking Candy From a Stranger

Roxas growled, glaring into the cupboard like he could summon his chocolate bars with the sheer force of his glower. The cupboard was bare, only a scrap of foil remained as evidence that his chocolate bars had once occupied this space. 

"Sora!"

The cupboard door slammed shut, hard enough that it banged back open, almost hitting him in the face. 

Roxas ignored this in favour of stomping out of the kitchen and kicking open the door to his room-mate/brother's bedroom. It was empty, bed covers untidily rumpled but unoccupied.

Roxas let out a hiss, eyes narrowed and briefly contemplated trashing Sora's room, before deciding that it wasn't worth the retaliation it would undoubtedly inspire. 

Sora wouldn't see it as fair retribution for the crime of stealing Roxas's premium chocolate stash, the dark chocolate sea salt bars that he spent a ridiculous proportion of his shitty retail worker paycheck on,  _ his one luxury!  _

Stomping back to the kitchen, Roxas opened a different cupboard and stared into it contemplatively. He wasn't much of a cook, but dessert was a dish best served cold. Eating some of Sora's massive stash of candy would be a fitting payback, but there was one problem. Roxas hated most of the candy that Sora loved, not having much of a sweet tooth, and there was no way he could make enough of a dent in Sora's sweets for it to count as payback. He picked up a packet of rainbow strips, the type coated in a sour sugar. He at least could stomach these. 

He stomped back out to the shared living room and threw himself down onto the beat up couch, tearing open the sweet packet with his teeth and taking a chomp out of a strip. The sournesss made his lips purse, and he reflexively licked the sugar off them. He didn't particularly like the sweets, but his pride dictated that he finish the packet. Not that Sora was likely to even notice a single packet missing from his hoard. He huffed a sigh, blowing blonde spikes out of his eyes and laid down on his couch. 

He was still feeling spiteful, and the sour strips weren't sweetening his mood any. He could just throw the sweets in the trash, he supposed, but he didn't like the idea of just wasting food like that, even if the stuff he was thinking about chucking barely counted as food. Plus, knowing Sora, he’d probably just fish them back out. Or worse, try and make Roxas do it.  

Nose wrinkling in distaste, he gave up that idea and tried to think of something better. Maybe he could give it away? But to whom? His friends would be suspicious of sweets from Roxas, not being known for his generosity, and besides, word of his unusual act of sweet-based beneficence would doubtless make its way through their social circle and back to Sora’s ears. 

He shifted on the couch; secondhand and there was a spring that poked through, but they'd gotten it free off Craigslist so -

\-  _ now that was an idea _ . Roxas fished his phone out of the pockets of his shorts and pulled up the website.

Idly he navigated to the right section and started composing an ad. 

Free Candy.

What the title says, literally about 2 kilos of candy, free to whoever wants it.

Collect only, no creeps.

do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers. 

He read it over, then went back and added

This is NOT a sex thing. 

Then hit post, put the tv on and promptly forgot about it for the next hour or so.

He'd been dozing off while some reality show where people bid on storage containers played, but jerked awake when his phone vibrated. 

He grabbed his phone, rolling his eyes when he saw it was from Sora, saying that he was staying over Riku's tonight. The amount of time his brother was spending over there, he might as well have moved in with the guy, although Roxas was grudgingly glad he hadn't, knowing there was no way he could afford the rent on this place by himself and desperate to avoid the hell of living in college accommodation. 

He was about to chuck his phone back on the table when he realised he had another notification - actually, a bunch of notifications. The Craigslist ad. 

Smirking, he sat up and started swiping through the responses, smirk turning to a disgusted frown as he found that despite the very clear message he'd sent about this not being some kind of code for a hookup, most of the responses had some kind of sexual undertone. 

Except for one. 

It was a pretty normal, non-sexual and non-creepy reply, just asking if the candy was still available, saying that the respondent had his own transport, and that he lived in the same zip code as Roxas. 

Running his tongue over his teeth and grimacing at the gritty feel the sugared rainbow strip had left behind, Roxas fired off a response saying that the candy was still available if he wanted it and was okay picking it up.

\- Cool, what time's good for pick-up? And what's your address?

Roxas messaged back, letting him know that he had work at 7pm, but was free before then, and included his address, hitting send before he could consider how good an idea it was to be giving out his address on the internet. 

He got a response almost immediately saying great, that he'd had a couple of things to do, but he'd be over by 5pm to pick up the sweets. 

Roxas wondered if it was too late to have a change of heart. Not because he felt bad for Sora, that chocolate-stealing fucker deserved it, but he was definitely feeling nervous at the prospect of having some strange guy come over to his flat, especially as he was going to be all alone.

He shifted on the couch, no longer in the mood to relax. "Shit."

There'd been a hour until the guy was due to turn up, so Roxas had some time to stew. He spent a good five minutes bagging up Sora's candy, then double-bagging it just to be sure the bag wouldn't split, then spent another ten minutes pacing the kitchen, panicking about the fact he'd just invited a stranger over. He spent another five minutes rummaging through his stuff to try and find his struggle bat from his highschool years, something to hide behind the door to make him feel a little safer, then decided he was being ridiculous and went back to slump on the couch and check his phone. No more messages from Sora, and no messages from the Craiglist guy either. He put the tv back on and zoned out until he was startled by the sound of someone knocking on the door. 

"Shit!" He jumped up, abruptly freaked out again for approximately five seconds that whoever was at the door was going to steal his kidneys, then freaked out anew at spotting a pair of dirty boxers on the floor and realising he hadn't bothered to tidy. 

Whoever was knocking clearly didn't have much patience, and the knocking increased in volume. That sparked a little flicker of annoyance in Roxas. The guy was getting something for free here after all, he could can the attitude. 

"Coming!" Roxas yelled, irritably, kicking the dirty boxers into a corner before making his way to the front door, deliberately taking his time now. 

"Hullloo?" A muffled voice called through the letterbox, "Anyone home?"

Roxas rolled his eyes, undoing the safety chain, thoughts of home invasion and organ harvesting forgotten in his annoyance. "I said, I'm -"

He pulled the door open as he spoke and the rest of his sentence died in his throat as he laid eyes on Craiglist guy. His first impression was of a leather jacket and faded black band tshirt. Then he looked up. Fuck, this dude was tall. Long red hair with what looked like an entire can of hairspray in. Eyes, the brightest green he'd ever seen, and -

"Shit, face tattoos?" he asked, surprised and dismayed, and made to slam the door.

Faster than he could react, a combat booted foot was in the doorway, stopping the door from slamming in the stranger's face. 

"Hi," the strange face-tattooed man said, with a hopeful wriggle of his fingers. "It's me. Uh, Axel. The guy who responded to your ad?" he finished, when it seemed likely that the blank look of incomprehension on Roxas's face wasn't going away. 

Roxas blinked and slowly began to untense. Despite the tattoos, the guy didn't seem like he was inclined to do anything criminal like shove the rest of the way through the doorway and ransack the flat. "Candy. You're here for the candy, right?"

Now it was the stranger's turn to give him an odd look, like he was the one who needed to be wary of Roxas. "Uh, yeah. That was what you were giving away, right?"

"Right," Roxas says, relieved. "Candy. Nothing else. Just candy." He adds the last part just because he wants to politely reiterate that this isn't a sex thing or a drugs thing, because, well, he met this guy on Craigslist, where everything is either sex or drugs. 

The stranger is still giving him an odd look, and Roxas realises that his words might in fact be having the opposite effect. He decides to get on with it and get this awkward encounter over as soon as possible, an objective that is somewhat complicated by the fact he's left the bag with the candy in on the counter in the kitchen. 

"Come in," he mutters, averting his eyes from the guy's face and shuffling into the hallway. There's a beat of hesitation, then another set of footsteps as the guy follows him to the kitchen. 

"Shit." Craigslist dude - Axel? - lets out a low whistle as he sees the bulging bag on the kitchen counter. "You really weren't kidding about how much candy there is."

Roxas shrugs. "Yeah, it's pretty heavy. Got a bit of everything in as well, so there should at least be some stuff you like." 

Axel - Roxas is pretty sure the dude said his name was Axel, shoves one hand in the bag and fishes around, before pulling out a red lollipop. "Sweet."

Roxas kind of shifts on his feet, not quite sure how to tell the guy to take the candy and leave, and while he's figuring that out, Axel unwraps the sucker and sticks it in his mouth and turns to look at Roxas with those bright green eyes. "You on a diet or something?" he asks without removing the lollipop from his mouth. 

Roxas shakes his head. "No, but my roommate is starting one.”

Those green eyes narrow a little. "Is this stolen candy that I'm consuming?"

Roxas shrugs, candidly. Axel doesn't seem like the type to be concerned with petty crime. "Maybe. But trust  me, he deserves it." 

Axel laughs softly, pulling the lollipop free with a smack of his lips. "You got a crappy roommate too?"

"Is there any other type?" Roxas responds, and despite himself he's starting to relax a little about Axel being in the flat, him not having done anything particularly creepy so far. 

Axel inclines his head in agreement. "Stolen candy tastes the sweetest anyway." He sticks the lollipop back in his mouth. 

Roxas shrugs disinterestedly. "If you say so."

"Not into sweets?"

"Not really."

"Sweet enough already?" There's a teasing note to Axel's tone.

Roxas scowls and Axel appears to take that as his answer, laughing. "I like dark chocolate," Roxas mutters. 

"That doesn't even count as candy, dude," Axel says, crossing his arms over his chest. "So what did this roommate do to inspire this act of petty vengenance?"

"Ate my chocolate, and it's 90% cocoa with seasalt and he doesn't even like it," Roxas growls, fists clenching as he briefly remembers how annoyed he'd been. 

"Seasalt huh?" Axel says curiously. 

"It sounds weird, but it's really good," Roxas says grumpily. 

"No, I believe you actually."

Roxas eyes him and the bag of candy skeptically. "Not sure I trust your taste."

Axel snorts, and pulls the lollipop stick out of his mouth, apparently finished with it. "I like some sweets now and again, I'm not a psychopath -" this is said pointedly, as if to infer that Roxas perhaps is - "but really this isn't for me, it's for my roommate." 

"The previously mentioned crappy roommate?" Roxas asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Surprisingly, Axel flushes, checks turning a light pink that Roxas tries to pretend isn't kind of adorably at odds with the guy's whole leather-clad-face-tattooed look. 

"He's kind of a ditz, and the only way I can get him to do chores is to bribe him," Axel confesses.

Roxas can't help the laugh that escapes him. "Wow, sounds like we both got stuck with annoyingly immature roommates."

A little to his surprise, Axel doesn't seem to mind Roxas laughing at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles and echoes Roxas’s earlier statement. "Is there any other type?"

There's a lull that follows after that remark that's surprisingly comfortable, if Roxas's phone didn’t beep an alarm at him to remind him he's got work in an hour, he might not have realised so quickly that Axel's been in his house for quarter of an hour - way longer than is necessary to just pick up the sweets. 

"Shit," Roxas swipes away the reminder on his phone. 

Axel watches, head tilting to the side. "Your roommate on his way back? Do I need to flee the scene of the crime?"

"Nah, just my phone reminding me I've got stuff to do."

Axel nods, seemingly taking the hint as he grabs the bag and lifts it with a surprising amount of ease considering how skinny the guy seems to be. "Off out?"

"Off to work," Roxas corrects, moving past him to escort him to the front door. 

"You work nights?" Axel asks.

Roxas gives a quick nod as he moves into the hall. "Yeah, less people around."

He hears a low chuckle from behind him. "Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine." 

Roxas doesn't even dignify that with an answer, rolling his eyes as he pulls the front door open. 

"Well," Axel moves past him to stand on the doorstep. "It was nice to meet you. Thanks for the free sweets."

"No problem," Roxas says, leaning against the doorway. He wonders if he's the only one with an odd sense of disappointment that this random encounter is drawing to an end. "Good luck with the roommate."

"You too," Axel says, and doesn't get off Roxas's doorstep. 

Roxas doesn't ask him to leave, and they stare at each other for a moment, before Axel breaks the awkward silence. 

"Look, this is probably really weird, but you said you like seasalt and I was going to ask you if you'd ever tried seasalt icecream and if maybe you'd want to get some with me sometime?" He says all in a rush. 

Both of Roxas's eyebrows raise. "That does sound kind of weird, but yeah. Sure." 

Axel's shoulders which had started to hunch defensively straighten in shock. "What, really?"

"Yeah." Despite himself, Roxas can feel his lips tug up into a smile. "Seasalt icecream sounds... interesting."

Axel practically beams, and Roxas averts his eyes because it's fucking contagious, he swears to god, and there's no way he grinning like a goof over a probably-not-a-date with some guy he met on Craigslist, for Christ's sake. He's just not.

"Cool," Axel says a second later, and when Roxas looks back the goofy grin is gone, nothing to show it was there except for the small, pleased upturned corners of Axel's mouth. "What's your number? And uh, have you got a name to go with it?"

Roxas rolls his eyes again and holds out a hand for a phone which he promptly recieves and types his details into. 

"Roxas," Axel says, reading his name aloud, and there's something about hearing his name in Axel's voice that Roxas could get used to. "I'm Axel. Got it memorized?"


End file.
